If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have realised that I like facts about various subjects.

One of them is food.

I have already done a post about peanut butter (click here) and one about chocolate (click here) , both everyday items that almost all of use and enjoy. ‘

Today’s post is about probably THE most loved and enjoyed drink that we use everyday.

So here we have lots and lots of things you probably never knew about you coffee.

Enjoy (with a nice cup of coffee or three perhaps).

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According to legend during the 9th century Ethopian shepherds first noticed the effects of caffeine when they saw their goats appearing to become frisky and ‘dance’ after eating coffee berries.

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Originally coffee was eaten.

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African tribes mixed coffee berries with fat to make energy balls

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Coffee has been used as a beverage for over 700 years.

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The rise of Islam contributed greatly to the popularilty of coffee. The religion prohibited drinking alcohol, but coffee was considered an acceptable drink

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In Turkey, the bridegroom as once required to make a vow during the wedding to always make sure to provide their wives with coffee. If they did not do so it was considered grounds for divorce.

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Also in Turkey, the intended bride is required to serve coffee to her parents and future husband when he comes to ask for her hand in marriage; however, she has no say so in the outcome of the request. Tradition has it that her response is in the sweetness or lack thereof of the coffee. Sweet coffee supposedly means she is okay with the arrangement while salty means she is not.

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All the coffee grown in the world grows in the bean belt which is the area between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn

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Hawaii is the only state in the US that grows coffee

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The heavy tea tax imposed on the American colonies in 1773, which caused the ‘Boston Tea Party’, resulted in America switching from tea to coffee. Drinking coffee became an expression of freedom.

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Black coffee with no sugar contains no calories.

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Drinking a single cup of coffee that has been brewing for 20 minutes provides the body with 300 phytochemicals which act as antioxidants and stay in the body for up to a month.

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New Yorkers drink almost seven times more coffee than other cities in the US.

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Coffee is a psychoactive. And at high doses it can make you see things… It can also kill you…The lethal dose of caffeine is roughly 100 cups of coffee.

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The French philosopher Voltaire is said to have drank 50 cups of coffee a day.

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In 1675 Charles II, King of England issued a proclamation banning Coffee Houses. He said that they were places where people met to plot against him.

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Coffee is the second most traded commodity on earth, after oil.

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70% of the world consumes Arabica coffee, which is mild and aromatic. The remaining 30% drink Robusta, which is more bitter tasting but has 50% more caffeine than Arabica

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Coffee grows on trees, which can grow up to 30 feet tall but commercially are cultivated to around 10 feet in height for easier picking

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A coffee tree has a lifespan of about 50 to 70 years.

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When it is in bloom, the coffee tree is covered with 30,000 white flowers which begin to develop into fruit after 24 – 36 hours.

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A coffee tree can flower eight times in any one year – depending on rainfall.

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The coffee cherries turn from yellow to orange and then bright red, 6 – 8 months after flowering.

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One coffee tree yields less than half a kilo of coffee per year.

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A French doctor in the 1600s suggested Cafe Au Laits for patients, inspiring people to begin adding milk to coffee.

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The coffee bean is actually a seed inside a bright red berry

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Coffee berries are picked, dried and stripped down until all that is left is the green bean

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Once shipped the beans are roasted at around 500F, after a few minutes the bean will pop and double in size, a few minutes after that the bean will pop again which means the bean is ready

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The aromas in coffee develop at the 10th minute of roasting.

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Coffee increases in volume during roasting by 18.60%.

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Caffeine is not the main bitter compound in coffee. Rather, the pungent perpetrators are antioxidants.

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George Washington invented instant coffee. No, not him, the George Washington from Belgiun, living in Guatemala in 1906, although the invention has also been claimed by a Japanese American chemist known as Satori Kato in 1901.

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Espresso is regulated by the Italian government because it is considered an essential part of their daily life

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Espresso is not a particular roast, bean or blend, just the way the coffee is prepared by shooting pressurized hot water through finely ground coffee

In 1822 the French were the first to innovate a crude espresso machine. The Italians then perfected this machine and became the first to manufacture it.

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Contrary to popular belief, espresso has one-third the caffeine of a cup of coffee, simply due to serving size differences.

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In 1785, the coffee revolt broke out in Prussia because coffee consumption was restricted to the nobility, the clergy and high officials.

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James Mason invented the coffee percolator on December 26, 1865.

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30% of coffee drinkers in US added a sweetener of some kind to their coffee, compared with 57% in UK.

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Coffee sacks are usually made of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.

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October 1st is official “Coffee Day” in Japan.

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Scientists have discovered more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.

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Italy now has over 200,000 coffee bars, and still growing.

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The term Americano comes from American GIs during WWII who would order espresso with water to dilute the strong flavor

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The term cup of Joe also comes from American servicemen in WWII who were known as big coffee drinkers

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The custom of tipping waiters originated in early European Coffee Houses, in order to receive good service in that loud, dirty, hectic place you needed to Tip Big.

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In the ancient Arab culture there was only one way a woman could legally divorce: If her husband didn’t provide enough coffee.

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Melitta Bentz a housewife from Dresden, Germany, invented the first coffee filter in 1908.

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Johan Sebastian Bach wrote an opera about a woman who was addicted to coffee.

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There is a way to brew coffee with marijuana in it and it is described as producing a “dreamy” kind of coffee buzz.

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In Greece and Turkey, the oldest person is always served their coffee first.

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Some of the worlds most powerful businesses, including Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange, started life as a coffee houses.

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In the 1600s there was a controversy over whether or not Catholics could drink coffee, luckily for them Pope Clement VIII loved coffee and authorized its use.

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Caffeine, which is found in coffee, increases the effect of some painkillers, especially aspirin and paracetamol.

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Dorothy Jones of Boston was the first American coffee trader, In 1670 she was granted a license to sell coffee.

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In Africa coffee beans are soaked in water mixed with spices and served as candy to chew.

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A regular 6oz cup of coffee contains about 150 milligrams of caffeine, most physicians call this a “therapeutic dose”.

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There are over 50 species of coffee world wide. Though only 2, arabica and robusta, are commonly used in commercial coffee production.

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Robusta coffee beans have twice as much caffeine than Arabica beans, but our of less quality.

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If you drink five to 10 cups of decaffeinated coffee, you could get as much caffeine as from one or two cups of caffeinated coffee, a study found.

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To produce decaffeinated coffee the beans are steamed, so that dissolved caffeine rises to the surface, where it is washed off using an organic solvent called methylene chloride.

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Coffee can actually be used to fuel a car.

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At one point, Brazil had such a coffee surplus that they tried to find other uses for it, including using it to make plastic.

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The world record for most coffee consumption is 82 cups of coffee in 7 hours.

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Contrary to popular belief light roast coffee actually has more caffeine than dark roast coffee. The reason for this is that the longer coffee is roasted the more caffeine cooked out of the bean.

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An expert in preparing Turkish coffee is known as a “kahveci”.

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The Nicaraguan Margogpipe is the largest of all coffee beans.

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King Frederick of Germany created a special task force to search out illicit coffee smugglers. The task force was known as the Kaffee Schnuffler. The king believed that soldiers who drank coffee were not dependable.

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Both the French and American Revolutions were planned in coffee houses.

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‘Excelso’ or ‘supremo’ do not mean a better quality of coffee when used to describe coffee beans, it refers to the size of the coffee bean.

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Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets got his start doing coffee ads.

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One the largest misconception in the U.S. today about coffee is that Mocha Java coffee is a chocolaty beverage. In fact there is no chocolate in the Mocha or Java bean at all. Mocha is the name of the largest port in Yemen, here is where all of the African coffee beans are traded and transported. Java is the name of an island in Indonesia where the Java Bean comes from. Both coffees are a dark bean and provide a very rich and bold coffee, when you mix the two together you get Mocha Java coffee.

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Coffee at one stage in its life or another provides a living to more than 100 million people.

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During World War II there was a coffee drinking competition between the branches of the military. The Marines claimed to drink the most – twenty cups a day.

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Coffee was so scarce in Germany that during WWII “coffee bombs” or bags of coffee were dropped from planes to turn the people against their government.

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In Staten Island, there’s a restaurant owner that drinks fifty cups of coffee a day.

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The actress who played the Wicked Witch Of The West in the Wizard Of Oz, Margaret Hamilton, was promoting Maxwell House in the 1970’s.

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In December 2001 Brazil produced a scented postage stamp to promote its coffee – the smell should last between 3 and 5 years.

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No matter what people tell you, caffeine cannot help you sober up.

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The first webcam was invented at The University of Cambridge to let people know if the coffee pot was full or not.

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The Japanese believe that bathing in coffee grounds fermented with pineapple pulp will reduce wrinkles and beautify the skin and there is a spa in Japan that lets you bathe in coffee, tea, or wine. I wouldn’t drink it though…

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Before coffee caught on in the US in the 1700s, beer was breakfast drink of choice. Difficult choice!

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Irish coffee was actually invented to warm up cold American plane passengers leaving from Ireland.

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On May 11, 1926, the slogan “Maxwell House Good to the last drop” was trademark registered.

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There is a tourist agency for people wanting to take coffee vacations called Cafe Away.

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Norway drinks the most coffee per person. The United States is ranked number 12.

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Teddy Roosevelt is and was the greatest American coffee drinker, consuming a gallon a day. But you probably shouldn’t attempt to do that.

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The name cappuccino comes from: the resemblance of the drink to the clothing of the Capuchin monks.

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A study conducted at the University of Sao Paulo found that sperm motility was markedly higher in coffee drinkers versus non coffee-drinkers. And it turns out that it doesn’t matter whether you drink one or ten cups a day: The only detectable difference was found between coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers.

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Beethoven counted the number of coffee beans he used to make his coffee and insisted on 60 beans per cup.

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During the American Civil War soldiers who were craving coffee and couldn’t get it tried roasting sweet potatoes and corn to make a beverage similar to coffee. It obviously didn’t become a popular choice.

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In 1674 a group of London women formed a group called WPAC (Women’s Petition Against Coffee). They didn’t like the amount of time their husbands spent in coffee houses rather than being home where they belonged.

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According to David Levitsky, PhD, professor of nutritional science at Cornell University, “Caffeine decreases the rate at which the stomach dumps its contents into the duodenum – a part of the small intestine where digestion takes place – and also increases metabolic rate.” so sipping a cup post-meal could, in small part, help promote a healthy weight.

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Water is the only beverage more popular than coffee.

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Coffee contains over 1200 chemicals and over half of those are responsible for creating its flavor.

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The average coffee drinker consumes 3 cups of coffee per day.

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Three countries consume 65% of the world’s coffee: America, France, and Germany.

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Coffee grounds sprinkled on the ground around plants and the garden will stop snails and slugs from eating the plants.

Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per millilitre of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about 5 cups of coffee.

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Coffee was first known in Europe as Arabian Wine.

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It was said that cowboys made their coffee by putting ground coffee into a sock (hopefully a clean one) and immersed it in water heated over a camp fire. When ready, they would pour the coffee into tin cups and drink it.

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A study from the Harvard School of Public Health, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that women who regularly drink fully caffeinated coffee have a 20% lower risk of depression than non-coffee drinkers. The study, which followed a group of women for 10 years, found that as more coffee was consumed (up to six cups per day), the likelihood of depression decreased.

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There are two major coffee markets in the world. One is in London, which deals with the buying of Robusta coffee. The other is the ‘C’ contract market, known as Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange (CSCE), which is in New York. It handles the trade of Arabica coffee. The ‘C’ market is also a futures market.